Bringing Beckett Home
It’s been nearly six months since I boarded a plane with my dear friend, Melissa. We were China bound to go meet and bring home her precious son, Beckett. The experience of bringing Beckett home has forever changed my heart and quite possibly, my life. I want to share with you what a two-year-old Chinese orphan with albinism and autism taught me about what it really means to be lost, and also what it means to be found.
Anyone who is familiar with foster care and adoption understands that adoption is preceded by a series of tremendous losses for the child to be adopted. Sometimes the pain and loss begins immediately at birth and results from an early life of incredible hardships, but the greatest loss almost always occurs when a child loses his or her birth parents and becomes an orphan. Beckett was abandoned at seven months old. When he was taken in by a local orphanage he had already become acquainted with immeasurable pain. Yet, despite being so close to having his very own family, he would first have to, once again, lose everything familiar to him.
Melissa and her husband, Brian, were obedient to God’s command to care for orphans and their hearts were moved to personally adopt. Beckett is their sixth child, their third child adopted from China. I was delighted to travel with Melissa to bring Beckett home. I have been a foster mother for years, and was under no delusions about how hard adoption can be. I knew Beckett might be deathly afraid of us. I knew he might hate us. I knew he might scream all night and all day. I knew he might not want to eat. I knew he might just shut down completely. As much as Melissa knew Beckett was her son, Beckett would have no idea she was his mother. We fasted and prayed. Our families fasted and prayed. We prayed that God would touch his little heart and provide supernatural trust and understanding that Melissa is his mother.
When the Chinese nannies brought Beckett to our hotel room to meet his mother on what many adoptive families call “gotchya day”, Beckett was wearing a pair of Angry Bird sneakers. Angry bird soon became his nickname, because, wow, he was really angry. Despite our best efforts, he was absolutely miserable with us. Hindsight bias has been gracious and both Melissa and I can now laugh, but to say his adjustment wasn’t easy would be an understatement. God was merciful and provided us with well-timed, much needed periods of peace, but Beckett clearly did not want his mom or anything she had to offer. He wanted his orphanage and everything his mother was requiring him to leave behind.
I looked at Beckett’s poor health, his low weight, his rotting teeth, his lack of muscle tone, his inability to speak, or eat, and I knew that Beckett was not well cared for. I am not blaming anyone. I am sure his caretakers did the best they could with the time and resources allotted to them, but when it comes to orphan care all over the world, even foster care right here in the United States, the resources are simply not enough and the need is far too great. I looked at my dear friend. I knew her heart, her family’s heart, I knew of the abundant blessings they would shower down on this little boy. They would give him affection, nourishment, education, and experiences beyond his wildest dreams! They were prepared to give him everything they had to offer and they would open up to him an entire world of opportunities, but he wanted his orphanage instead. He wanted his familiar caretakers. He wanted the barren crib that he probably had spent most of his life in. He wanted to be an orphan, because he didn’t know that God had something far greater in store for him instead.
My heart was torn into pieces. As I wept over Beckett’s temporary pain at being yanked away from everything he knew, God continually called my attention to a familiar Scripture:
“No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has in store for those who love Him.” 1 Corinthians 2:9
I realized that the inner turmoil I was witnessing little Beckett experience was the exact same turmoil that each child of God experiences. We too are orphans of this world, not even able to imagine life outside the confines of our proverbial orphanage walls. When God meets us, He finds us clinging to the railings of our barren cribs. As He tries to pull us away from our orphanages into His tight embrace, we pull away, we kick and scream, we shout and holler. We reject Him. We would rather be orphans in a world with so little to offer us, than be adopted by Christ into an eternity of His promises. We would rather stay where we are, than go where God is calling us to go. We would rather do what we have been doing than do what God is asking us to do. We would rather be on our own than belong to Him, because we we can’t see and we don’t know the glorious plans God has in store for us.
I was Beckett. When I was alone, in my barren crib, Christ found me. Sometimes, even now, I still am the orphan Beckett. I feel God calling me, or leading me, or encouraging me to follow Him outside of the orphanage gates, beyond the familiarity of the things of the world, and I don’t. I can’t. I’m too scared. I’m too scared to lose, too scared to sacrifice, too scared to miss out on something else.
I look at Beckett now and I see a child who delights in the joy of each day. He smiles, he giggles. He lines up objects in rows for hours at a time. He is spunky and silly and loves the show “The Voice” so much that he will run down the hall when he hears the intro music. He is so deeply loved, and he loves so deeply. Angry bird is no longer angry. He is a bundle of enthusiasm. He is evidence of God’s goodness. He is a miracle. I have no doubt his mom and dad saved his life.
Beckett couldn’t have imagined the glorious plans God had in store for him when God called him away from his familiar orphanage and put him in the arms of a strange lady who was about to take him away from everything he had ever known.
Likewise, we can’t imagine the glorious plans God has in store for us. When God calls us, when he whispers gently to us, “Come to me, my child. I will never leave you or forsake you. I have plans for you, for your future. Great plans. Just come.” Like Beckett, we ought to go to our Father because our minds cannot even begin to conceive the glory that God has in store for those who love Him.
I am so grateful that Beckett now has an Earthly mother and father who love him. But even more importantly, I know that Brian and Melissa will make it their life mission to raise Beckett to intimately know his Father in Heaven. If you are still an orphan, if you are clinging to a barren crib, it’s time to let go. It’s time to reach out to the One who made you, the One who loves you. You are one decision away from being a child of The King. Through Jesus’s death, you too, can live. Place your trust in Jesus. Ask Christ to forgive your sins and step out of the orphanage gates into the glory of living for the Lord. Just like Beckett, your eyes haven’t seen, your ears haven’t heard, and your mind hasn’t even begun to conceive what God has in store for you when you are called according to His purpose.
